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Patent Attorney Breaks Down Impact of the America Invents Act

Posted by Unknown on from the ensuring-patent-lawyers-have-work dept.

msmoriarty writes "As you probably heard, on Friday the Obama administration signed the America Invents Act, which changed our system to 'first to file.' Support for the bill itself was split in the tech industry: Microsoft and IBM (among others) supported the act, Google and Apple opposed it. Redmondmag asked a patent attorney to explain in detail the act and what impact he thinks it will have on the tech industry. According to him, there are still many open questions. From the article: 'The Act has not accomplished [first to file] harmonization in a straightforward or unambiguous way. For example, it is not clear whether a prior use or offer for sale of an invention by an inventor or joint inventor within a year of the date of filing would render the invention unpatentable.' He also said that the act clearly favors larger corporations, and he doubts it will speed up the patent process itself, which was one of its intended benefits."

6 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Short version by durrr · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're all fucked.

  2. "the act clearly favors larger corporations" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "the act clearly favors larger corporations"

    Well, duh! Isn't that the sole purpose of all acts and reforms? More advantages for larger corporations?

    1. Re:"the act clearly favors larger corporations" by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Anonymous Coward, I must request that you cease your class warfare immediately.

      Strike all instances of "larger corporations" and replace them with "job creators" immediately.

      Thank you for your cooperation.

    2. Re:"the act clearly favors larger corporations" by DCFusor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case. Funny the cognitive dissonance when they mention how it's *small* companies that create most of the jobs and innovation. There is no way you can now break into the big boys club. They just patent everything they can, and while they hate each other -- they can cross-license at nominal or no cost. But a little guy with one patent who starts eating into their market share will always find they've patented about 10 obvious things they can use against him, as the days of anything being simple, covered by just one patent, are long gone. As durrr said above, we're all fucked.

      --
      Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  3. Re:Worst thing for America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The trolls could do that before. What they could do before, and could not do now, is pre-date the invention by 364 days, so that they could show priority over you. Of course that would be perjury, but the USPTO stopped prosecuting perjury on patent applications when they disbanded their enforcement division for budget reasons in 1974. No prosecutions since then.

    Filing a patent on someone else's invention is still itself perjury. Now, we just have to get them to prosecute that.

  4. Re:Simple by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

    IBM is now mostly a services company with little need for new patents.

    And yet in 2009, they received 4900 patents and in 2010 they received nearly 5900 which is more than any other company. IBM has for 18 consecutive years held the #1 position in granted patents . Reality doesn't seem to march your assertion.